Mindgames
by Pickwick12
Summary: The minds of the Hannibal characters, explored through the games they play. Rated T to be safe, for mention of things that occur in the show.
1. Chess

**Chess**

Chess is a game of the mind, but more than that, it's a game of strategy, where every piece must be scrutinized and used to its full potential. It's about sacrifice, death for the sake of the king. In the end, he's the only one who matters.

Getting attached to chess pieces is unavoidable.

Pawn. He's a round, short man who cries at nothing. Awkward, silly, enthusiastic. Everything the king is not. He's pathetic, the way a small, trapped animal is pathetic. He's below the need for sacrifice. Except—a pawn can't afford to be curious. A pawn can't dine with kings, or he's sure to lose his head. A pawn who is important enough to be noticed is too important to live.

Knight. He's an imposing man, with long coats and bristling eyebrows. He'd like the world to think he's invincible. But the king sees between the cracks in his face and the fear behind his eyes. He carries a lance, but he's fallible. Still, diagonal moves can't always be predicted, and he's clever. Too clever. He will live as long as he can be manipulated.

Queen. She is beautiful, and she is cold, and she is powerful, like a bespoke sculpture made just for him. The king has killed to defend her. He would do so again. But not at his own risk, never at his own risk. She is the opposite of a liability. The queen will live until the last possible moment. It is his design that they should rule together, when the game is won.

Bishop. She is kissable. The king agrees with that as with all obvious assertions, such as the color of the sky or the taste of port wine. Like the wind, she blows where she will, but he has long-since mapped the corners of her mind. The law is the board upon which she moves, and she will not leave its confines. He has no need to mar the elegance of her movements. It would be vulgar to do so.

Rook. Castling is when the king changes places with his rook. He is the most important of all, though he cannot know his part in the plan. Words spoken in friendship, confidences given, hand on shoulder. They circle around one another, as bonds deeper and darker than friendship bind their hands together. He does not know that the king can shake free at a moment's notice, while he himself is a prisoner. When the time is right, the king castles, and the move is irrevocable.

En passant. She guts the boy with her knife, and he knows. Once in a very long while, a pawn is worthy of promotion. The king guides her trembling, feeble hand. In time, she will be something more, something he can be proud of.


	2. Poker

**Poker**

Poker is about understanding people—reading subtle, tiny cues that even they don't know they're giving off. Empathizing for a purpose. Becoming each of the other players in turn, until you can make a bet with reasonable certainty.

Everybody has a tell.

Her game is conventional, cerebral, calculated. She's not risky. She'd rather fold than take a chance on an unstable bet. The problem is, unstable is part of the cards he's been dealt, and he can't change his hand. He can only play what he has. Her caution is her tell.

He's a bold gambler, willing to bet big, less willing to absorb the consequences. His people are his cards; he's a bad bluffer. Being part of that hand is unspeakably dangerous. He only knows how to play until he wins. His perfectionism is his tell.

She's too young to play well, he thinks at first. But she stays in the game, somehow, white-knuckling her way through round after round, scraping by with enough chips to stay alive. But she has cracks around the edges. She holds her cards to her chest until they fall one by one, dropped by her weakening grasp. Her fear is her tell.

Too easy—that's what she is. So many clues they're overwhelming. Her transparency is her weapon. She can be used, but in the using, she will take what she can for her own purposes. She has a keen eye. She can conceal nothing, but nothing can be concealed from her. Her eagerness is her tell.

He's the consummate Poker player. His every move is calculated to seem uncalculated. He plays with a deliberateness that belies the passion burning underneath the surface, and he plays to win the whole game; even lost rounds somehow seem like victories to him. He has no tell.


	3. Capture the Flag

**Capture the Flag**

Capture the Flag is about results. Each team member, weak or strong, must be used somehow, even if their only use is as bait. A captain has to work with what he's been given, and he has to win. That's all there is to it.

Team members get lost; it's impossible not to feel responsible.

She's one of the strong ones, the ones he puts on the front lines, even if it means risking a sacrifice. He goes home at night, and he can't sleep for thinking about the flag—the capture—and that's what gives him the strength to get a small girl with blonde hair and eager eyes out of a class she really should be in. The problem is, once there's only a disembodied voice and a cold arm left of her, he doesn't see the flag any more in his waking nightmares. He just sees her face. He tells himself he did what he had to do, but he isn't sure.

That's why he can't bear to do it to the Empath, not at first. He's protective, in his own way. But then he catches the scent of victory in the distance. After all, he's a captain, first and foremost. He does what captains do, and he lets the man with the haunted eyes go much, much further than he ever should have. He doesn't realize until it's far too late.

He tries to fix his mistake—that's what captains do when things go wrong in the middle of a game. He tells himself the tall, cold doctor is on the team, but he's not convinced. He can read people; he's good at it. There's something not quite right, something like an animal in those intelligent eyes. Still, he's good for the disintegrating asset.

Animalistic—that's what the red-haired woman is, too. She's out for herself, nothing more, nothing less. But he didn't become captain for nothing, and he can use anyone to their full potential, even if they don't realize it, even if all they have to offer is a poison pen. All that matters is that he gets his flag; he doesn't care whose hands close around it first.

He also doesn't care who he hurts. That's not quite true. He cares, but caring can't affect the job. If he has to break hearts to keep his team intact, he will. It's hard to convince himself of that when the eyes of his favorite subordinate are filled with angry tears and he senses that he's lost her respect forever. Sometimes the flag—hardly seems worth it.


	4. Risk

**Risk**

Risk is a maddening game, the place where strategy meets luck. You can plan your moves, but the almighty dice have as much say as you do.

No amount of thinking can eliminate chance.

She wants to conquer him the moment she sees him. It's not that she wants to take him over; it's more than that and less than that at the same time. She wants to understand him, to solve the cipher that makes up his mind. For her, to understand is to win. She doesn't ask for more; he's an unstable territory.

He lets her walk right in, plant a flag, and make her home as deep into his headspace as she wants. But she's known him long enough to realize that what she sees isn't really him; it's a hologram of a mind. It's a pleasant place with a perfect smile and a special reserve just for her. But it's not real.

She's lived through worlds of agony with enough trauma victims to know that she can't invade the girl's territory with force. She has to tiptoe, putting one foot slowly in front of the other until she's made an outpost in the edge of the wild country. She's not welcome; she doesn't know why.

He tries to invade her land, the wild-eyed doctor behind bars. His dice rolls get him more than he bargained for, though. She decimates the made-up territory he thinks he inhabits, and he almost kills her for it. She thinks, later, that it's strange how satisfied she feels.

Too much thinking. That's what he always says. They inhabit different spheres. His is the one country she never tries to invade. She doesn't tell him he has no territory in hers, either. He may wear the title of boss, but she belongs to herself.


	5. Pick-Up Sticks

**Pick-Up Sticks**

Pick-up sticks is a game of concentration. One wrong move, and the whole thing comes crashing down. A bad choice means the end of the game, and all is lost.

There's no way to get so good at it that you never lose.

The psychiatrist is easy to pull from the pile of seemingly haphazard dangers heaped in a pile in front of her when she first awakens. She's one of those doctors who wants to believe the best; the girl can tell that from their first meeting. She's not stupid, but she's not a threat. She can be played with ease.

She's wary of the reporter. The redheaded bloodhound is one of those sticks that seems like it will be an easy pull, but it turns out to be entwined with all the other sticks in a way that make it almost impossible to grasp without wrecking the game. It takes every bit of skill the girl possesses to use their conversations to her advantage, and she starts to wonder after a while if she's really the one being played.

She can tell right away that the heavyset cop is best left alone. He's deep in the pile, with no desire to make himself accessible or kind. She tiptoes around him, knowing that disturbing him in the slightest will lose her the game forever.

The Empath is an unknown quantity, but interacting with him is one of those moves she has to make to stay in the game. She goes slowly, scared of what will happen if she tries to pull him free of the morass of evidence and pain around her. In the end, he's too big of a risk, and she lets him lie.

The softspoken doctor is the perfect move. She grasps at him with all her might, knowing for sure that he's her move to win the game. It's not until she's committed, fully and completely, that she realizes the horrible truth. She's miscalculated, and the game is over. She lost.


End file.
